Chūnin Exams (XIII).

Beating her first opponent had been easy, the poor boy standing no chance against her.

Well, maybe that was a bit unfair. He did use a few interesting traps, after all. Not that it did him much good. In the end, even as distracted as Anko was, worrying about Yukio and suppressing her annoyance at the blonde kunoichi that beat him, she was still more than capable of defeating him without any significant effort. Now, things might have been different if she fought someone like Mezo, who would actually be a challenge and against which she couldn't afford not to concentrate fully on the fight, but she didn't, so there was that.

That brought Anko to where she was now, standing in the middle of the arena and waiting for her second opponent to arrive.

As she had told the Hokage the day before, she didn't believe she could win against Yugito Nii. It scratched at her ego, but there was nothing she could do about it. The thing was, now that she had seen her beat her teammate, she suddenly didn't feel as ready to resign to her inevitable defeat as she had yesterday. Who cared if she was slower, had less chakra, or was simply less skilled than her? She certainly did not. Even if she was inferior to her opponent in all these regards, she could still win as long as she fought smartly. That meant not getting carried away or letting herself get gloated into something stupid. She stood a chance as long as she kept a cool head.

Besides, Anko had a trick or two up her sleeve as well.

Finally, her opponent arrived, coming to a stop just a few meters in front of her.

"This fight will be between Yugito Nii from Kumogakure and Anko Mitarashi from Konohagakure! Are the participants ready?"

"Hai!"

"Hai!"

"Then begin!"

Anko knew she couldn't escape her even if she tried, Yukio's fight had shown very clearly that her opponent was faster than she could ever hope to be, so she chose to do the opposite; the moment their proctor gave the start signal, she pushed herself forwards with as much power as she could, making the ground beneath her crack under the pressure of her feet.

Her opponent's eyes widened slightly in shock, but she recovered quick enough to evade the kunai with which she slashed at her head.

Not letting up in the slightest, Anko pressed forwards. No matter how much she loathed Orochimaru, his fighting style was still very effective; the way its practitioner twisted their bodies in ways that should be impossible even for a shinobi allowed them not only to evade most attacks, it was also very effective in attacking from weird angles that others didn't expect. As long as she could get close enough to the blonde to make it impossible for her to counter her while she herself could still continue her attacks, she could win.

Getting closer again, Anko sent a kick towards her chest that was blocked by two crossed arms. Then, Yugito tried to counter with a kick of her own, only to retreat her leg when she made to slash at the limb with her knife. Using the opportunity where she was slightly unbalanced, Anko tried to sweep her other leg away to throw her to the ground.

Sensing her attack in time, Yugito escaped backwards with a flick-flack before suddenly jumping to the side to avoid the shuriken that were flying towards her. The next moment, Anko was already back in front of her, trying once again to cut her head off with her kunai.

It was such a shame that her opponent knew that she used poison. She would doubtlessly be much less hesitant if that weren't the case.

They exchanged blows and kicks for several minutes during which Anko slowly but surely pushed Yugito back, much to the excitement of the crowd. She knew better than to assume that this meant she was the superior fighter, though; her fighting style required her to come as close to her opponent as possible while Yugito's techniques worked only when there was a bit more distance between them. She wasn't backing away because she was pressured, not exactly, but because she wanted to get into a position from which she could attack herself.

It was a small but important difference.

Still, although she was technically not at an advantage, this kind of fight was what she wanted; superior or not, the longer the fight, lasted the higher the chances her opponent made a mistake. As long as she could cut her just once, her poison would do the rest.

The problem was that the same applied to her as well. Unfortunately, the odds were that she would make a mistake first, meaning she needed to do something. to end this.

She didn't need to wait for long before an opportunity presented itself.

Just like all the times before, the two of them clashed for a few short attacks before Yugito backed away a bit further to get some more space. Normally, Anko would rush after her, trying not to give her the chance to prepare any technique that could cause her problems, but not this time. Instead, she raised her arms and prepared a Jutsu of her own that didn't require any hand seals.

"Sen'ei Tajashu!" (Many Hidden Snake Hands)

Seven snakes rushed from both her sleeves, some heading right towards the Kumo-nin while others cut off possible escape routes.

Unfortunately, even though the delay in her offensive was almost non-existence, it was still enough to allow her opponent to prepare a technique of her own.

"Raiton: Gian!" (Lightning Release: False Darkness)

A sudden stream of lightning emitted from her hand, vaporizing the snakes in its path and striking Anko square in the chest.

A second later, her body was replaced by a pile of rocks in a heap of white smoke.

"Mandara no Jin!" (Formation of Ten Thousand Snakes)

Her opponent's eyes became wide as her head snapped up, only to witness her summon an innumerable amount of snakes from Anko's sleeves and mouth.

Now, it should be mentioned that her technique was nowhere close to the strength of when Orochimaru used it; when he used it, he was indeed able to summon tens of thousands of snakes. Something like that was far out of her reach, however. Even so, the number of snakes she could summon was still more than enough to be a serious threat for anyone that encountered it. That was the reason she had learned it for the exams in the first place. She had planned to use it against Itachi if they fought in the exams, hopefully during the finale, but she wouldn't even reach the finale if she lost here, so she did not hesitate in using it now.

Unfortunately, it also required an immense amount of chakra.

The blonde was smart enough to recognize that just throwing any Jutsu of her own against the waves of snakes would be useless. Sure, it would blow a hole into it, but the killed snakes would be replaced by new ones almost immediately. Her only choices were to escape or use a sufficient powerful technique that wiped all of them out in one single blow while preferable hitting Anko as well. She certainly had the chakra to do so too, but it was still somewhat risky; she had still two fights ahead of her and even her chakra was not infinite. Who knew how strong her next opponent would be, or the one after that? Using such a powerful Jutsu now would not exactly exhaust her, meaning she would still be able to continue, but she would also undoubtedly be weakened. With that in mind, it wasn't much of a surprise when she jumped backwards into the air, landing on the wall that was just ten meters behind Anko and sticking to its surface by channeling chakra to her feet.

Which was also exactly what she had hoped her opponent would do.

Yugito had barely any time to react before Anko appeared almost on top of her, only dodging the strike of her kunai by a hair. By prioritizing that attack, however, there was nothing she could do to stop the kick against her chest that threw her right towards the already waiting snakes on the ground.

Anko didn't stop there, though. Rather than just waiting to see what would happen, she jumped further upwards the wall to bring as much distance between herself and the ground while collecting most of her remaining chakra for one last technique.

"Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!" (Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique)

The Kumo-nin did the only thing she could do; when she was just two meters above the ground, she kicked against the wall to push herself out of the way from the trajectory of the medium-sized fireball. However, while that saved her from being burned to ash, it wasn't enough to bring distance between her and the snake pit below.

She and the fireball hit the ground almost simultaneously, but before the crowd had the chance to see how the blonde Kunoichi would deal with the situation, their sight was taken away by a blaze of flames. There was a collective take for breath when the flames, rather than just crashing into the ground set the various snakes on fire, which then resulted in them blowing up. These little explosions set off other explosions as well when they consumed nearby snakes, resulting in a chain of explosions that shook the entire arena.

The commotion lasted almost an entire minute to calm down, and it was only a minute after that that the crowd could see both participants again through all the stirred dust and the smoke from the flames.

On one side was Anko, still kneeling far up the wall of the arena and breathing hard as she glared at her opponent below. On the other side was Yugito, kneeling in a similar position only half a dozen meters away from the big crater that was a result of all the explosions.

For a few moments, amusement and frustration fought for dominance inside her head before the former won out. So not even that is enough to beat her? Dammit, what kind of monster is she